Married But Available

by B. Nyamnjoh

  “One day, she was just coming out of Par-Amour Hotel with a man when her husband was also driving in with a very young girl.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “She asked her boyfriend to drop her at Lulu Coiffure where I was doing my hair. She came fuming with anger. She told me and others present what she had seen and wanted to go into the hotel to disgrace her husband. We cautioned her that she was merely going to make a fool of herself. She forgot one thing: that disgracing her husband could mean an end to their marriage.”

  “Lucky for her to run into some advisors,” volunteered Lilly Loveless.

  “What she did was, she packed her things and went to her mother, taking along her children, thinking that her husband would come searching for her. To her greatest dismay, he never went there nor begged her in anyway. As she told me, ‘My friend, hungry want kill me and my pikin them for Sawang, so I been see say: better I come back, after all, me too I de try my own line dem. Papa dem de talk for village say better man wear old cap dan for waka with empty head. Man pikin dey like cock. When yi talk two time: I de cam you no de see-am, I de cam you no de see-am, I give you one yard wrapper? Any woman wey ye deny na ye know.’

  “Even when she came back, her husband did not offer a word. When he looked at her, you could see his eyes asking: ‘whatever became of the slim beautiful girl I married?’ He was full of disgust for her, as if she had become too fat for his liking, and had developed such bad habits like picking her nose absentmindedly, clearing her throat and spitting carelessly, and generally not attending to her dressing and appearance the way she was expected to keep him attracted. So she told me that this incident made her vow never again to run away from her home where she was sure of shelter, food, medication and her children’s education was guaranteed.

  “Her husband’s presence, according to her, did not disturb her from prostituting. She exaggerated her clandestine outings until one day she fell inside an uncompleted latrine when she was returning from one of her ‘rendezvous.’”

  “No way,” insisted Lilly Loveless.

  “For real, but fortunately, this hole was behind our house, so when I heard her voice, I rushed out, taking a torch with me. I found her inside a deep hole, and I managed to bring her out.”

  “You go to great depths in your friendships,” remarked Lilly Loveless.

  “Wouldn’t you do the same if I were in such a situation?” insisted Britney.

  “Luckily you’re not someone to get yourself into such a situation, are you?” asked Lilly Loveless, both assuredly and hopefully.

  “At any rate, this friend, she did not sustain any major injury. Despite this whole incident, she was still returning home late at night. At first, she passed by my house many times to take a ‘Kaba Ngondo’ when she realised that her husband arrived before her and forced me to escort her to her house. I did not know that she was telling her husband that she was with me or that we were returning from a quarter meeting. When I realised this, I ceased to receive her in my house.

  “Now, these days, her husband has become weak and is doing everything to please her. He has bought an affordable second-hand Mercedes for her. Instead of this keeping her calm, she has become worse, and has even been nick-named ‘Mammy Gentile.’”

  “So,” suggested Lilly Loveless, “as the old man retired and his heart awoke, the young girl was off in the woods.”

  “I guess you could put it that way. Anyway, she was that way from the beginning, ever since her mother handed her over. And, if you don’t mind my saying, I think you could use a nap.”

  “Nap?” exclaimed Lilly Loveless, “With those hills you spoke about coming into view? And the sweet, succulent tropical fruit paradise you promised? How could I?”

  She anticipated each new turn, to refill her eyes and spirit. Even without drumbeats, banana leaves were dancing with pawpaw fruits and pineapples in carnival. Everything was so rich and green and lavish, so virtuous. It was as if God, on his way through these parts, had stumbled over a root or something and spilled her basket of abundance there. Little wonder that many tourists were in the habit of referring to these parts of Mimboland as Africa in miniature, the dream of a lifetime and a lifetime of dream. God was certainly at her creative best when she dwelled on these parts.

  Britney smiled and looked out of the window, determined to make this the best touristic experience for Lilly Loveless for a long, long time to come.

  Britney also composed in her head, an email which she wanted to send to Providence as soon as they arrived in Zintgraffstown. In addition to telling him ‘mission accomplished – your mom’s phone is safely with her and you can now reach her whenever you want with instructions on where and when to go for her remittances,’ she planned to write: “Providence, sweetheart, I have, I believe, recovered from the typhoid. My mother prepared some herbs and sent down for me to drink. I have been drinking them all this while. She sends her greetings. By the way, she was very sick, problems with her throat and chest. She went to the hospital in Zintgraffstown. I seized the opportunity of bringing the parcel to your mom to see her, and she has improved remarkably. Your daughter is a bit fat but very happy and her eyes as beautiful as always. She misses her Dad, and so does her mum, so much you cannot imagine… I must tell you, I am so lonely and I feel like I have lost somebody who was and is still my inspiration. Some days missing you is particularly acute. In the mornings and sometimes in the afternoon on such days, I feel you would come calling at any moment. When the day passes and you don’t come, it breaks my heart and I feel something great is missing. I feel empty. I wait for your charming smile all day long. I can never tell you enough what a charming smile you’ve got. It is hard, darling, very hard. I pray that I will be fine. Best of luck dear, my love flies to you with all the success it can bring.”

  15

  Britney manoeuvred from stall to stall at the bustling Puttkamerstown food market. She was doing her weekly shopping and collecting what she needed to prepare a sumptuous Saturday lunch at her place for Lilly Loveless. Market women kept asking her how much she paid the whiteman-woman – who followed not far behind – to carry her basket around.

  It was obvious that Britney was a regular, the way she was greeted by those from whom she bought condiments and vegetables and fruits and by those from whom she did not. She didn’t buy her tomatoes just anywhere. She passed many up before arriving in front of a plump woman seated behind her wooden table and nursing her baby at the edge of the market. The woman automatically selected for Britney the firmest tomatoes from the different piles of five each before her. “Man yi customer na man yi customer,” she said, and Britney thanked her for the friendship and understanding.

  Britney had wanted to make Achu, but she wasn’t happy with the quality of the cocoyam at the market that day. She therefore settled for Poulet DG after a brief consultation with Lilly Loveless who, having tasted Jollof Rice already, was eager for something new, and for her first Directeur General experience. There was not too much haggling over prices, until it came to discussing the price of the chicken. A runt of a man offered her a smallish chicken for what she wanted to pay, but she insisted she needed the biggest and fleshiest to prepare a proper first Poulet DG experience for her august visitor from Muzunguland. ‘You no get respect for whiteman-woman?’ asked Britney. She accused the poultry seller of wanting to block her from being a good hostess, until he backed down, insisting that she would have to acknowledge his sacrifice by committing herself to buying from him and only him in future. So finally they met halfway, and he gave the chicken to two young boys to behead and slice up as Britney had instructed, under her close supervision.

  Britney took time for the plantains, selecting the plumpest she could find. On the way out of the market, she teased a young girl dousing water from a plastic bag on fish to keep it fresh that she better not spoil her new purple top with that fishy water or she’d mess with her.

  Just as they emerged from the market with their purchases, a cyclist mot
ioned with his left hand to pass in front of Britney– with at least a half dozen grey and white speckled guinea fowls attached to each side of his handlebars. Lilly Loveless dropped the bags she was carrying and reached for her camera bag, then thought better about causing an accident, and settled for a mental photo.

  Greetings in pidgin from fellow students filled the walk to Britney’s off-campus apartment. Lilly Loveless thought of the signs she had seen on campus before it closed, something about speaking pidgin making you write Muzungulandish badly. She wondered if there had actually been research done to confirm the bold affirmation. She heard Britney using pidgin fluently and, judging from their exchanges so far, thought Britney mastered Muzungulandish just as well. She made a mental note to copy all the signs on pidgin at the university before leaving Puttkamerstown, if she was lucky enough for the strike to end before her journey back home. Lilly Loveless doubted if the administration were not themselves guilty of worse practices, as she had seen a sign about keeping the campus clean, which read: ‘To gather dirtiness is good, not to make dirty is better.’ Perhaps some rules are meant to be broken, and only by breaking rules of grammar and good speech could new speech patterns emerge. Not to speak a language well could be a people’s way of saying: ‘If we have been talking your language, maybe you should start talking ours.’

  The two were breathing heavily by the time they climbed three flights of stairs with their purchases. Britney opened one, two, three locks to let them in. She started unpacking the basket Lilly Loveless set on the counter. Lilly Loveless let her eyes rove around the kitchen and the opening from there out on the sitting room. “Well equipped,” she commented after noting the microwave, the blender, an exercise bike, the big screen TV and state of the art speakers. A real student with a difference, she thought; she must be bleeding to death the men in her life.

  “That’s thanks to my fiancé in Muzunguland,” explained Britney offhandedly. “Go ahead and put some good music on and make yourself comfortable while I concentrate on things here.”

  “I’ll be right there to help you slice up the plantains,” volunteered Lilly Loveless.

  “Not to,” said Britney, declining the offer. “They have to be cut just so, to match the way the chicken has been sliced. But feel free to make yourself comfortable with music, a book, or whatever catches your fancy.”

  Lilly Loveless settled down to sampling the music but before too long the aromas from the kitchen drew her there.

  “So, why do we call this dish, Poulet DG?” she asked as she leaned against the doorframe of the kitchen.

  “I knew you’d ask,” said Britney, who now wore an apron over her purple top and Levis. “It’s because if you try to buy this chicken dish at any restaurant, it’ll cost you at least Mim$8000, something only a Director General could afford in those days when people came about the name. Today it remains a prized dish, and a great honour to serve and be served it. So, Lilly Loveless, I’m making you a very elite dish.”

  “Mere students, relishing Poulet DG,” mused Lilly Loveless. “This is an occasion.”

  “One you’ll remember when you’re back in Muzunguland, I hope,” said Britney. “With me, friendship means everything, much more than money. Someone can have money yet die of loneliness.”

  “That’s true,” agreed Lilly Loveless. “I come from a society where it is very common to be rich and lonely.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about that disease. Providence, my fiancé, the rhythm of my heart, keeps telling me tales of what a strange lot you are in this regard.”

  “You’ve never mentioned your fiancé to me,” remarked Lilly Loveless, “at least not directly.”

  “That’s because I’m employed by you to do a particular assignment, not to talk about myself,” Britney countered.

  “So you promise to tell me your own story when this assignment is over?”

  “I promise to think about it.”

  “That would be great. There are many things I’d like to learn about you and from you. For one thing, I’d like you to teach me how to make Poulet DG, so I may create it back home in Muzunguland,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “Only if you can sneak the right spices across borders,” corrected Britney. “You don’t think I’m using just stock cubes do you?!”

  “Of course not, master chef, let me get the table set.”

  “What table? We’ll just serve ourselves in the kitchen and sit in front of the TV to eat,” explained Britney.

  After a while, Britney and Lilly Loveless did just that. Britney was obviously content with how things had turned out and with the compliments and lip-licking of Lilly Loveless.

  As they ate, Britney took the opportunity to crosscheck on several things about Muzunguland, most of which she had picked up second-hand, and the rest from Providence and her other friends out there. One of the first emails Providence sent back to her was a complaint on how he was forced to cook his own food, mostly rice and chicken, and how he had over salted the onion and tomato sauce. To which Britney replied: ‘You can see how valuable women are.’

  Britney told Lilly Loveless: “He simply does not know how to cook and eats poorly when I’m not there. Out there in Muzunguland, he is picking up and adding a lot of weight now. I love him better when he is fuller but not fat. Unfortunately, I seem to be putting on weight as well and Providence is complaining too, so I’m back to dieting and my regular exercises. I seem to add weight faster when I’m more relaxed, so thank you for giving me a job to keep me busy and not simply sitting at the reception of Mountain View.”

  “But you’ve got a nice cute figure. You are not fat at all,” said Lilly Loveless, sizing her up. “A bit plump maybe but certainly not fat.”

  “That’s what you see now,” said Britney. “But you needed to see me a few months back. I was like my reflection in water.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  They both laughed.

  Britney asked Lilly Loveless if it is true, what she’s heard from Providence and her girlfriends, that life in Muzunguland is generally peaceful, in terms of housework, and that it’s a lot easier than back here in Mimboland. Everything is provided to make cleaning and washing faster and more enjoyable. “Providence has promised to provide me with some of the gadgets he has now in Muzunguland when he gets back home so that I don’t need to hire a house help. He is completely pissed off with the problems of house help and the bad influence on kids. I’m very grateful about that, of course.”

  Lilly Loveless agreed that things are relatively more expensive in Muzunguland, but insisted that people are coping because of a lot more opportunity to work and for better pay.

  “Providence says the people are cold at first, but when you get to know them, they can be nice. They are also very hardworking and humble. There, work is their religion and they are well-paid.”

  Lilly Loveless agreed.

  “A girlfriend of mine, who works like mad to send money back home to her family to educate the daughter she left behind, says that Muzungulander women are nice too, but that most don’t work. They are made to stay at home and take care of the kids. They don’t actually understand the fact that she is still in school doing a PhD, because life is much easier for them and what their social security system dishes out is better than what a PhD earns here. However, most are very unhappy and want to work and be relevant. Is that true?”

  “Yes, and no,” said Lilly Loveless.

  “Why yes and no?”

  “Those who want to work can. But if they choose to work full time, they can’t at the same time choose to be full time mothers. We have to be responsible in the choices we make, and bear the consequences.”

  “But children must be parented. Someone has to do it.”

  “But no one is forced to do it.”

  “In a way, people are forced, since society must continue to reproduce itself, and that entails bearing and bringing up children.”

  “Yes, but nobody holds a gun to your head to bear children
and to mother them full time.”

  “It’s an abnegation of social responsibility to think in those terms. Or is it because cheap and affordable labour is available from other parts of the world? I read the other day that low birth rates and a growing elderly population, are pushing your authorities in Muzunguland to entice the parents of each newborn or adopted child with huge monetary incentives.”

  Lilly Loveless didn’t like the direction the discussion was taking, so she said: “I’ve made my choice, at least for the foreseeable future. No children, full stop. The idea of getting married and having children just scares me to death. And I am not alone. Fewer and fewer women are choosing to marry, and delayed or aborted motherhood is certainly the way of the future, judging by current trends in Muzunguland. Already, fertility clinics are offering women the opportunity to freeze some of their eggs for later should they change their mind about not having children. And the fact that more and more women are freezing their eggs in this way means that motherhood as you know and celebrate it in Mimboland is in danger of disappearing in the not so distant future.” Back in Muzunguland, she belonged to circles where the belief is strong that there’s nothing more certain to ruin a good relationship than marriage and children.

  “How interesting,” said Britney, shaking her head in vigorous denial, “A childless society? That’s where we differ. I have one, and Providence and I plan to have a lot more when we settle down. Having children to us is like paying our debts to our parents and to past generations, and a contribution to ensuring the future.”

  “I agree and respect that,” said Lilly Loveless, in a conciliatory tone. “But somehow, in our Muzunguland experience, people have always chosen whether or not to marry or have children, whether or not to be full time mothers, and society has never ground to a halt because of the choices. Somehow it has always worked, and perhaps for that reason, we don’t stop to answer metaphysical questions. We remain grounded in everyday sociology.”